"Fall is a good time to plant greens in your home garden," says LSU AgCenter horticulturist Dr. Tom Koske. Crops include mustard, turnips, spinach, collards, kale and Swiss chard. All are cool-season crops with similar cultural requirements.

This publication is intended to introduce home vegetable gardeners to the various methods used to manage the many diseases that affect these crops.

Downy mildew is a potentially devastating disease of all cucurbits. Disease symptoms, development, control measures and color photographs of symptoms on pumpkin, cucumber and watermelon are included.

Gardeners are often unaware of a serious pest waiting for the spring vegetables to begin growing. These pests are small, microscopic animals called nematodes, and they attack the roots of many plants commonly grown in the garden. There are two major types of nematodes that cause the most problems for vegetables.

Many summer-blooming annuals, perennials and vegetables are setting seeds now, and you can harvest the seeds, store them and then grow a new crop of plants for your garden next year. This can be fun, save a little money and allow you to share seeds with gardening friends.

Fall and winter, the value of home gardens reaches $60.5 million.

Nitrogen (N) is a very important plant nutrient for all fall vegetable crops. A sufficient and continuous amount must be supplied to all plants to achieve good yields. It also is the nutrient most often lacking in soils.

Controlling weeds in small areas may be pretty simplistic.

Expected yields from a good southern vegetable garden will vary, but estimates can help plan the planting scheme for the garden.

September is Louisiana’s last chance to plant a relatively diversified vegetable garden before next spring. During this month we can detect the first signs of cooler weather that accompanies the fall, says LSU AgCenter horticulturist Dr. Tom Koske.